By Tom

I’ve been following Congress’ “passive decision” to draw the line on deficit spending just when there was a $23 billion education bill in the works, designed to bridge the gap between the $100 billion given to education last year and some time in the future in which education is fully funded. Sponsored by Senators Harkin and Miller, both Democrats, it received tepid support from Obama and even tedider support from Congressional Democrats. By all accounts, it is isn't going anywhere, and will probably be dead by the time you read this.

But I still feel like talking about it.

We’ve bailed out God knows how many banks and investment firms in the past two years, along with a car company, but when education asks for some emergency money to keep a couple hundred thousand teachers in the classroom for another year, suddenly it’s time to count pennies.

Fine; I get it. We can't just put everything on Visa for the next ten years. We need to draw the line somewhere, and start paying for stuff, even education, with real money. But what we don’t need is nonsense like the recent editorial in the Seattle Times by Lynne Varner. Read it yourself, if you want, but she makes two bold points that I can’t ignore:

First of all, she states, “Adding billions more to the federal tab our children will pay might have been easier to swallow if the benefits were clear, or even existed. But the only thing proponents of more stimulus have been able to say is that it will save teaching jobs.”

That’s a peculiar contention. I wonder what she thinks the kids in those teachers’ classrooms will do next year. Teach themselves? Go home?

Those of us who’ve experienced a real teacher getting laid off from a real school know that you feel bad twice; first (and worst) for the students, and then for the teacher. The students lose a teacher and have to get crammed into already-packed classrooms. Consequently, every one of them loses a part of their education.

The teacher, who already has an education, only loses a job, which will eventually be replaced.

Varner goes on to decry the bill because it doesn’t contain language designed to selectively rehire the good teachers and lay off the bad ones.

This would actually be a wonderful and innovative idea.

And believe it or not, most educators would love to see that happen; because believe it or not, those of us who teach well hate the fact that there are students in the rooms where bad teachers are teaching.

So let’s think this through. Before firing the bad teachers, we need to first identify them. The most obvious way is to use student test scores, right? Sure, but there’s a catch. As it turns out, about half of us teach children or subjects for which there just isn’t standards-based test data. (Think kindergarten through second grade; plus PE, music, library, social studies, art, counseling, shop, drama, etc.)

So that won’t work.

How about if we watched the teachers who we think might be incompetent to see if what they’re doing is being done poorly?

Sure; but let’s be fair. Let’s make sure the observer has a protocol designed to make the procedure objective. That, of course, would imply a set of professional standards with which each teacher is familiar ahead of time. And since this is the land of redemption, let’s offer remediation along the way so that the teacher can at least try to fix what he or she is doing wrong.

And in order to make sure that the teacher’s supervisor isn’t just being arbitrary and capricious, (trust me; it happens) they certainly deserve representation, right?

So let’s see; we articulate a set of professional standards that each teacher is expected to embody. If someone doesn’t, their supervisor has to engage them in a process involving observation, attempted remediation, documentation, and representation. And then, If things don’t improve, they get terminated.  

Hold on a second…THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT WE HAVE IN PLACE RIGHT NOW!

If Lynne Varner can find a simpler way to get rid of the bad teachers that infect our schools, then by all means, she should step up and say something. But so far, this is the best system we’ve been able to come up with.

Maybe that’s why Senators Harkin and Miller didn’t include language designed to save the jobs of good teachers and lay off the bad ones when they wrote their $23 billion education bill. Because they aren’t stupid. They know that our students need the money in their schools now, not ten years from now, after they've already graduated and after Congress has completely redesigned the entire educational evaluation and termination system.

Too bad it’s not going to happen.